Tennessee Waltz

En route to Nashville with their band the Golden West Cowboys in Christmas 1946, Pee Wee King and Redd Stewart heard Bill Monroe’s new song “Kentucky Waltz” on the radio. Stewart had an idea to write a Tennessee waltz using the melody of King’s theme song: “No Name Waltz” and wrote the lyrics on a matchbox as he and King thought up the words. They first recorded “The Tennessee Waltz” in 1948 and it become a country music standard, due, mainly, to the immense success of Patti Page’s version of the song recorded in New York in 1950.